What’s in a street name?

By ⋅ March 22, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment
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In the hothouse of Israeli-Palestinian relations, deciding what to name a city street can be a matter of great pride or biting offense. The World’s Matthew Bell reports from Jerusalem.

The de facto Palestinian capital has lots of boutique shops, lively nightlife and I hear there’s even a sushi place. But in some respects, the city is playing catch up. Most of the streets here for example don’t have names. If you want directions, someone gives you a landmark It’s the building next to the computer shop above the kebab joint Municipal authorities are changing things, though. New blue and white street signs are popping up around town. And one of them – on a small residential street near the center of town – bears the name of Rachel Corrie. She is the only American so far to be honored in this way.

“She symbolizes a human rights activist who gave up the most important thing – which is her life – for the sake of the Palestinian cause.”

Maha Shahadi is public relations director at the Ramallah mayor’s office. She says Rachel Corrie is a martyr – shahida, in Arabic. Corrie was killed in 2003 as she was trying to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza.

“This is a very small thing that we can do by keeping her name on one of the streets of Ramallah, knowing that by doing that we would be keeping her alive in the memory and the minds of our coming generations and they would know more and more about her.”

In Israel, Rachel Corrie is a controversial figure. Israeli authorities say they were taking down homes that were hiding tunnels for smuggling weapons into Gaza. And they bristle at claims that Corrie was killed on purpose. But it’s another woman’s name – proposed by Palestinians for a public square just outside of Ramallah – that Israelis find far more troubling.

”I made these chocolates.” Bell:”These are chocolates with your sister’s picture?” “You can have another one to eat and one to keep.”

Rashida Moghrabi

Rashida Moghrabi welcomes visitors to her office with a huge box of chocolates. Pictured on them is a young woman with bushy hair, a kaffiyeh scarf around her neck, and in her lap, an AK-47. She is Moghrabi’s sister Dalal Mograbi who was going to have a square named after her until Palestinian authorities canceled the ceremony. It was to take place during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit. Rashida Moghrabi hopes the plan was just postponed, not canceled.

“She deserve to be honored. I’m sure any American hero who fought for his country, I mean I know there is different opinion about the matter, but I am sure an American hero who fight for his country has the right to be honored. So, Dalal has the right to be honored because Dalal carried the gun and fought for the future generation live in peace.”

Moghrabi says she hopes people think about WHY her sister did what she did, rather than WHAT she did 32 years ago this month: the 19 year-old Dalal lead a team of 12 heavily-armed Palestinian militants from Lebanon into northern Israel. They carried out what’s known to Israelis as the coastal massacre, the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of Israel. Moghrabi’s team fired at civilians in passing cars. They killed an American nature photographer in the area, and then hijacked a bus. Israeli security forces responded. When the shooting and explosions were over, the Israelis say 38 civilians were dead – including 13 children. When I show Israeli writer Gershom Gorenberg one of the chocolates with Moghrabi’s picture on it, he says he’s not shocked.

“It’s not surprising. But it bothers me in a deep way. And it bothers me in a deep way when I see this on either side of the conflict. You can go around Israel and find streets named after Jewish terrorists who carried out their actions before 1948.”

Gorenberg got to thinking about this during a visit to the coastal town of Akko. It’s a mixed Jewish and Arab town. Two streets there are named after members of the Irgun and Stern Gang, two Jewish militant groups from the 1930s and 40s. Gorenberg says these individuals committed assassinations and were willing to kill innocent civilians for the nationalist cause.

“The main Arab high school of Akko is on one of these streets, and I thought to myself, do they really understand what the educational message of that is? To put an Arab high school on that street is to contradict the message that you’re trying to get across that terror cannot be justified.”

Gorenberg says people on both sides of the conflict want peace. But they’re also capable of holding conflicting views. And in a protracted zero-sum conflict such as this, with each side claiming whatever small victory it can, the naming of a street or public square is one way to score political points. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell in Jerusalem.

Square on the outskirts of Ramallah that activists named in honor of Dalal Moghrabi


Discussion

One comment for “What’s in a street name?”

  • Doron

    How like The World to distort issues like that over the naming after a square after Dalal Mughrabi.

    First Bell tells us (Sun. 22 March) about a street named after Rachel Corrie; and then he interviews Mugrabhi’s sister at length!

    Why didn’t he interview one of the relatives of the 37 Israeli civilians killed? Then, to rub it in, Bell talked of streets named after Irgun/ Stern gang militants in Acco, equating their actions with those of Mughrabi.

    The fact is that, whatever the sins of the Stern gang, or the Irgun, their PRIMARY FOCUS WAS MILITARY TARGETS. In stark contrast, Fatah and Hamas have always aimed primarily at civilian targets.

    By Bell’s logic, those who fought for US independence against the British are equal to Mughrabi also, and to Fatah/ Hamas terrorists. But, like Israel’s pre-independence militias, US independence fighters were not aiming at civilians, although occassionally civilians were hurt. Palestinian groups always have aimed mostly at civilian targets.